Toaru Majutsu no Index SS

Volume 2, Chapter 7: Someone Behind the Scenes is Unprepared and has to Clean Up. The Second Friday of May.

He had dropped in for a visit at the city of Milan and utterly destroyed a human trafficking organization.

“Yes, yes, I get that much.”

The tall woman standing in the open front door, Silvia, stared at the man, Ollerus, with suspicious eyes.

Or more accurately, she was staring at the area behind him.

“What is that behind you?”

“O-oh, well, you know. I was intending to go destroy their headquarters and then call it a day, but these kids just kept coming out. If I just left them, it was possible they could get captured by someone else, so what else are you saying I should have done?”

“So you brought them with you?”

“Uuh...”

“So you brought back almost a hundred kids like you’re the Pied Piper of Hamelin?”

Ollerus had no answer to Silvia’s question and remained silent for a bit.

Silvia sighed and closed the front door.

“No!! Wait, wait!! I have the best possible answer for you!! I’m not saying we have to turn our apartment into a boarding school!! It just has to be until they can find foster parents!!”

“Throw them out.”

“That’s too cruel!! There’s no way I can do that, you heartless woman!! Are you someone’s animal-hating mother!? Reaching out a hand when someone is in need is the basic law of the world!!”

“You damn dust-covered ruined noble...If that was really how the world worked, things wouldn’t be so haaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrdddddd!!”

Silvia quickly swung the door open again hitting Ollerus who flew through the air like in a Hong Kong movie.

Silvia stood angrily in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

“You can say all the self-important things you want, but how do you think we’re going to feed all of them, hmm!? You’re always making these promises you can’t keep! Come here a second!! I think I’ll tie you up with rope and make you straddle the dog house!! Since you don’t seem to know what it means to anger Bonne Dame Silvia, I need to carve it into your body!!”

“Higyaaaaaaaahhhhhh!? Is this a wooden horse that can easily be made in the house!?”

And like that, Ollerus was being split down the groin in the yard in front of the apartment. Silvia didn’t seem to be able to just leave the almost 100 children out there, so she invited them inside the apartment building.

Once Silvia and the large group of children had disappeared into the building, one small child approached Ollerus who was still on top of the dog house near the entrance.

“I want to repay you for what you did for me,” said the little girl.

“Heh...heh heh heh. I didn’t save all of you because I wanted anything in return.”

The girl stared at Ollerus as he straddled the dog house.

“...Is everything fine now?”

“No, it isn’t,” responded Ollerus plainly. “In the end, it was all meaningless.”

“?”

“I am glad you adore me, but I didn’t really do anything. Chaining those human traffickers up and making them do manual labor is no different than what they did. That isn’t what I want.”

“But I still want to repay you.”

“If you truly think that, then bring yourself happiness with your own power.”

The dog house dug into Ollerus’s crotch, but his expression was a very serious one.

“I saved you even though it meant I had to face Silvia’s wrath, so of course I want you to be happy. In fact, it doesn’t make sense for me to wish for anything else.”

Even so, she wanted to repay him for his kindness.

She just didn’t feel right being in someone’s debt like that.

In order to find out what she could do to make Ollerus happy, she first needed to know more about him.

The girl next went to Silvia. Silvia was bowing in apology to the apartment’s landlord and wondering how she was going to cook enough food for 100 people and whether there were enough blankets and space for them to sleep in. She responded to the girl’s question.

“He is the man who should have been a majin.”

“?”

“I’m not talking about the god of the demon world[1]; I’m talking about the person who completely masters magic and steps foot into the domain of God. That’s what I mean by a Magic God.”

Silvia spoke slowly.

“A normal human is likely to die from reading a great number of grimoire originals, but the power he would have wielded as a Magic God is so special it would have been an even greater problem. Even if you have the needed knowledge, it’s meaningless if you don’t have the energy needed to implement it. In the end, he uses the theory of Hliðskjálf to purify life force so that it transforms into a special magical power. This just barely allows him to survive the process.

“If there were someone who used the power of a Magic God with only normal magical power, they would be a genuine monster,” added Silvia. The girl got the impression that she had been given a simplified explanation, but she still didn’t understand what any of it had meant. Silvia looked at the girl’s face and sighed.

“Basically, it’s like the kind of job that everyone dreams of having. Think of it as being a major leaguer or a player in the World Cup.”

“...You said he should have been one.”

“Yes, just listen to what that dumbass did.” Silvia spat the words out like they disgusted her. “It was the kind of chance that only comes once in 10,000 years. If he let it go, no one knew when it would come again. And guess what he did. No, he wasn’t even saving someone. He let that chance slip through his fingers while he ran around town looking for an animal hospital for an injured kitten.”

“...”

“He should have just become a Magic God, but he half-assed it and failed and now he keeps getting wrapped up in all sorts of problems. ...Not to mention that he’s an idiot. Although I suppose some people would call it being sentimental. He isn’t perfect. Even now, he sometimes remembers that time and cries late into the night.”

Silvia sighed yet again.

Then she continued speaking.

“But you know what he says about it?”

“What?”

“He says that he’s always regretted it and if he was in the situation again, there’s no guarantee he would do the same thing again. However, he still says that he truly thought that was the best thing to do at the time.”

“...”

“Well, that’s just who he is. He’s an idiot to the core. And whenever I look at that idiot, I get the idiotic idea that I should protect him. Thanks to that, I haven’t gone back to England and just stay here.”

After managing to procure enough blankets for 100 people and getting the children wrapped up in them and asleep, the giant mass of exhaustion that was Silvia lay sprawled out on the table as if she had been crushed. She then uttered the magic words.

“...I’m going to give you a taste of the horror of lacquer after this.”

“Ee!? Having my crotch crushed by the wooden horse isn’t fun, but a hell of itching isn’t great either!”

“Well, you just have to bear with it until we can pass them on to a local church. ...That’ll take a week tops, right? It’s going to be tough, but it’s a good chance to discipline your heart.”

“Wah!! You mean I have to keep it on the entire time!?”

“Anyway, I assume they were marked?”

“Yeah, they matched with the list. It was only a few of them, but that human trafficking organization seemed to have dealt with people that had certain idiosyncrasies.”

“...So it’s been verified?”

“Yes,” said Ollerus as he stretched. “It looks like I’m going to be busy again.”

The little girl had said she wanted to repay him.

But time wasn’t going to wait around so she could.

The man who should have become a Magic God left the city that very day and did not return.

[edit] References

1. ↑ The Japanese word "majin" can either mean "Magic God" or "Demon God".